Vayeshev 5774: Saint Joseph and the Scottsboro Boys

One of the most famous injustices in American history was the trial of nine black teens for an alleged rape of two white girls aboard a freight train on March 25, 1931. The “Scottsboro Boys” were tried in groups, and eight of them were sentenced to death (the ninth, who was only twelve at the time, was also sentenced to death by the all-white jury even though the prosecutors asked for life-imprisonment, and a mistrial was declared). The trials were flawed in numerous ways, but the racially charged atmosphere in Alabama scared off even civil rights organizations such as the NAACP from helping the defendants. A Jewish criminal defense attorney named Charles Leibowitz appealed the convictions and carried the fight all the way to the US Supreme Court. Even though the high court reversed the convictions, four of the defendants were retried in Alabama and given new lengthy prison sentences (one escaped prison and died later in Michigan). Just this week, the State of Alabama posthumously pardoned the three defendants, Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems and James A. Wright, the last of whom died in 1989. [For more on the story, see links below]

Reading this moving story, it is hard not to think of Joseph, who in our parashah is falsely accused of attempted rape and sent to jail with no apparent process to consider his side of the story. While there is no explicit mention of race as a factor, Mrs. Potiphar does “other” him in saying, “look, he [that is, Potiphar] has brought this Hebrew to mock us; he came to lie with me, but I cried out with a great voice.” In her telling, Mrs. Potiphar is both victim and heroine—her valiant defense sent the menacing Hebrew running away. Her account puts pressure on her husband, whom she has explicitly blamed for the failing to defend his own wife. He does not hesitate to toss Joseph in jail; problem solved.

The story of Joseph’s unjust conviction is of course just a set-up for his inexorable rise from the pit to the summit of society, from being the runt of Jacob’s litter to the alpha Israelite male, and from a Hebrew slave to an Egyptian master. But let’s tarry at the moment of Joseph’s temptation, when he “refused” Mrs. Potiphar’s request. The word vayima’ein is marked by the trop “shalshelet” to indicate either that her efforts to seduce Joseph were extended, or, perhaps, that he was indecisive on how to respond. While there are some midrashim that understand Joseph to waiver, the dominant tradition is to view him as the very image of righteousness. He is called “Saint Joseph” (Yosef Ha’Tzadik) in Bavli Yoma 35b, which says that Mrs. Potiphar sought to seduce him every day in multiple ways—by constantly changing her dress for him, by threatening to imprison him and even to have him maimed, and by offering him money—but at every step Joseph refused, placing his faith in God. In Solomon Schechter’s 1887 edition of Avot D’Rabbi Natan (second appendix to the first version, chapter seven—apparently from a Vatican manuscript that Solomon Buber showed Schechter), Mrs. Potiphar’s temptations of Joseph are even more extensive, but so too are his counterarguments and his steadfast refusals.

Joseph becomes the exemplar of the triumph of the good inclination over the evil inclination, which is described in ARN as “king of the 248 limbs”. Joseph’s rescue from jail becomes a metaphor for the rise of goodness from the dungeons, so that good finally triumphs over evil. In the mystical tradition, Joseph the righteous becomes the pillar of the world (based on Mishlei 10: 25, v’tzaddik y’sod olam) . When our portion begins, “these are the generations of Jacob, Joseph was 17…” the Zohar (Lekh Lekha, 85a) claims that it was only through Joseph that Jacob’s family and all of Israel could survive. This, it explains, is why Jeremiah says “my darling son is Ephraim” and, I would add, why the Jewish people to this day bless their sons through reference to Joseph’s sons.

Perhaps the great injustice of Joseph’s imprisonment was necessary to prove his righteousness. So too, it may have been the excesses of racial injustice such as the mistrial of the Scottsboro Boys that taught a nation that racism itself was evil. If the Jim Crow system had been more restrained, with casual discrimination but without lynchings and gross miscarriages of justice, then perhaps the civil rights movement would not have gathered such energy, and perhaps our society would have taken even longer to turn the tide.

Would that it were different, and that even slight injustices were taken seriously, and there were no need for flagrant violations of human rights to capture the attention of a callous world. Of the many lessons that Joseph has to offer, certainly one is for the reader to become increasingly attentive to injustice. It should not take decades for fairness to be restored, and for righteousness to reign. When Israel is called “ God’s witness” (Isaiah 43:10, 12) this arguably means that Israel is supposed to represent the divine qualities of justice and righteousness on earth. On Shabbat Vayeshev, let’s look at Joseph in jail, remember those who have been falsely imprisoned in our own land, and become agents of righteousness in the tradition of Joseph.